In which a group of graying eternal amateurs discuss their passions, interests and obsessions, among them: movies, art, politics, evolutionary biology, taxes, writing, computers, these kids these days, and lousy educations.

Have you ever run across "100 Bullets"? It's an ongoing graphic novel written by Brian Azzarello and arted by Eduardo Risso. I've read and enjoyed a couple of episodes. They're in a downbeat-gruesome/nihilistic-noir mode that generally strikes me as juvenile and tiresome. But Azzarello is a witty and resourceful writer; there's an underlying expansiveness and a brutal good humor in the way he pushes the form around. And I find Risso's art hilariously pleasing: sophisticated yet slapsticky, droll yet dynamic, suave yet antic.

If you haven't read it, I heartily recommend Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon's Preacher series, also put out by Vertigo. The series ended a few years back, intentionally (it was always intended as one long limited series), and has been completely collected in (I believe) 9 graphic novels, along with a few extra graphic novels detailing backstory for several characters. Hard to describe it, but it was basically a profoundly vulgar gleefuly blasphemous tale of a powers-imbued preacher with *serious* famiily issues, an alcoholic Irish vampire, and the preacher's hit man girlfriend's quest to find an absentee God and get him back to work. But that just scratches the surface.